Chris and David chose to speak about monetary policy and the role of the Monetary Policy Committee. I chose, instead, to focus on the task that faces the newly formed Bank of England's Financial Policy Committee. This post will focus on one of the points I made in my talk, the distinction between what I call institutional and systemic explanations of the 2008 financial crisis. My complete argument is published in a forthcoming paper "Financial Stability and the Role of the Financial Policy Committee", that will appear in The Manchester School.

Recent events have generated widespread consensus that the financial markets are not working as they should. But there is little agreement as to why. One explanation is that financial frictions can sometimes become more disruptive than usual and these frictions can be corrected by regulating financial institutions. An alternative explanation that I have promoted in my own work, is that financial markets do not allocate capital efficiently. The failure of financial markets occurs because people who will be born in the future cannot trade in current markets. I call this the absence of prenatal financial markets.